Did Vermeer use a camera obscura? What went wrong with Impressionist oil sketches? When did Klimt paint from photographs? Does any of this really detract from the art in a painting?
Bazille
The story of landscape paintings which are dominated by the sky, from the Dutch Golden Age to Surrealism.
Impressionists seem not to have taken to skying, and most of their paintings have high horizons. But there are exceptions.
He excelled across all genres, one of few painters of the time to do so. He was, and remains, one of the greatest European painters of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
He created some of the most important Impressionist paintings during this period, at La Grenouillère, and painting with Monet and Sisley.
From early portraits of his mother, to wooded landscapes in the style of Corot. When Renoir painted alongside Sisley, Bazille and Monet.
His parents intended him to run the family business, but he met the Impressionists in 1862 and became hooked on painting landscapes.
Six distinctive group portraits are now the works for which he is best known. But aren’t they strange, set in comparison with contemporary paintings?
A group portrait which failed so badly that he cut it up after it was shown at the Salon, a portrait of Manet, and another group portrait which inspired Impressionists.
After the huge death toll of the war, including 2 major painters, a week in Paris in May resulted in a further 7,000 deaths, and the destruction of public buildings. Hardly a painter in France wasn’t affected.
The Eclectic Light Company 